Missing
by Polly Lynn
Summary: "When she takes him back, everything is fragile, and it hurts. The way she rolls her eyes when he's too careful. The flicker of injury at the corners of her mouth when he leans too far the other way. When he feigns indifference because it seems like that's what she wants. Distance." One-shot set during "When the Bough Breaks" (2 x 05). In the "Unnamed" series.


Title: Missing

Rating: M

WC: ~ 2700

Summary: "When she takes him back, everything is fragile, and it hurts. The way she rolls her eyes when he's too careful. The flicker of injury at the corners of her mouth when he leans too far the other way. When he feigns indifference because it seems like that's what she wants. Distance." One-shot set during "When the Bough Breaks" (2 x 05)

A/N: In the "Unnamed" series.

* * *

He's not himself in the weeks they're apart. Like she's kept something of him and she won't let him near enough to find out what it even is.

When she takes him back, he realizes that it's her. Some part of him that wakens or comes into being. Something that answers a part of her that calls out, but it's painful.

When she takes him back, everything is fragile, and it hurts. The way she rolls her eyes when he's too careful. The flicker of injury at the corners of her mouth when he leans too far the other way. When he feigns indifference because it seems like that's what she wants. Distance.

It isn't, though. It doesn't seem to be what she wants at all.

She isn't herself, either. She hasn't been since she took him back.

Sometimes she watches him. When she thinks he's not looking, she studies him, and there's something unbearably sad behind her eyes.

Her mother. That's what he thinks most of the time. That he's opened a wound that won't heal, and she won't forgive him for that. He won't forgive himself, because she was meant for something more. She was meant for light and the wide world and that's what he's taken from her.

But sometimes he wonders if it's that at all. Sometimes he wonders if she feels the same way. Like she's lost something and he's the one who has hold of it.

Sometimes he wonders if she wants it back, too.

* * *

It's a bad time for this.

Or maybe it's the perfect time. The book launch and the other offer. A clean break.

She got along fine before him. She tells him that often enough, and everyone else chimes in now, too. Everyone talks about the end.

He got along fine, too. Before her, he was better than fine. And how long can he go on missing something he probably imagined anyway?

Except it has a hold. For something that might be imaginary, it has a hold on him.

He can do this in his sleep. The talk shows and interviews. Two hundred personal dedications, each as original as he can make it. Every one signed with a flourish.

It's a skin he practically slips into, except not this time. This time he's annoyed by everything. By the early mornings and Paula's high-pressure routine. Repeating stale lines and laughing at the same jokes over and over. Playing coy about a certain British spy, because of course everyone's heard already. Paula's seen to that for all her talk of jinxes.

He's tired of it all, and it's hardly even started. It'll go on for months. More if the offer comes through. If he leaves Nikki behind and takes it.

Everyone at Black Pawn is furious with him. He's tight lipped about his new creation, just when he should be talking her up. They're all working overtime to spin it as some kind of deliberate PR move—letting the character speak for herself. Building the mystery and all that.

But the truth is he can't do it. Talking heads and shock jocks ask him about Nikki and he freezes. He doesn't know where to begin.

He's a mess over her. The real thing and the woman on the page. She's unlike any character he's ever written. Better, he thinks. He thinks so, and he cares.

It's been a long, _long _time since he's worried about that kind of thing. Everyone prods him about his thin skin. His mother and the poker group. Paula and Gina and everyone. She does. Everyone goes on and on, and it's true he has his vanity. But he hasn't _cared _since before Derrick Storm.

That was part of the draw of a series. Something plot heavy with a good-enough central character. People might run hot or cold on any particular story. Storm would have his ups and downs with the audience, but they'd buy the next book and the next.

It's not that way with Nikki. He cares. He worries that he hasn't done right by her. He lies awake and worries that he could write a hundred books and not do her justice.

He's in love with her. The woman on the page.

He's in love.

* * *

When she shows up in the blue Hervé Léger, he knows he won't survive. This party. This night. _Her._ Staying or going, he won't survive.

She makes a beeline for Montgomery, turning heads as she goes, though she doesn't see it. She honestly doesn't see it.

She's uneasy. He sees it in the flush of pink dusting her jaw. In the line of her shoulders and the length of her stride. Like she's approaching a scene, though he knows too well how she moves when she's off the clock.

He excuses himself, drawn to his own end. Drawn to her.

But he's caught along the way. A conversation he wants no part of. Paula with her off-hand comments about Ibiza and her underwhelmed appraisal of the real thing. The woman behind Nikki.

_Get her out of your system. _

It throws him. The impossibility of the command and the truth sounding out inside him. An offer he's dreamed of all his life, and it's hollow now.

_I don't know that I'm ready to walk away from Nikki Heat_.

As if that's an option. As if he'll survive.

* * *

There's a perfect moment between them. He drifts up behind her. The warmth of his body touches the cool of her bare skin. She smiles to herself like she's expecting him.

His hands hover. He almost touches her. The undulation of her spine. The flare of her hip, more pronounced than usual in the snug fabric. He speaks in her ear. Just a syllable and she doesn't startle. She doesn't step away.

It's like she was waiting. Like this moment has been waiting all these weeks for them to come right again at last.

The book is in her hands, and her head is bowed. He sees the flash of silver catching the blue. The stir of her earring and the fall of pretty, delicate links over her collar bones and down between her breasts. She's still smiling. The one that turns in.

It's right. The words are just right.

_The dedication. Wow. Thank you. _

She turns toward him and it draws out. The moment. It winds around them, intimate and perfect. Sincere. He feels at home in his own skin for the first time in months.

_I meant it. You are extraordinary. _

It all goes wrong, then. He _does_ mean it. She knows, and he thinks for an instant that they've found their way at last.

But it all goes wrong.

With them, it always does.

* * *

They stride off in opposite directions. His skin is burning, and he can't get far enough from her. The room isn't big enough. The _world _isn't big enough.

He shakes off Paula's fingers at his elbow. He pushes past a sea of faces and shoulders through one door and another. Dark room after dark room until he hits a stairwell. He's gone the wrong way. Deeper into the interior of the building when he just wants air. He just wants out of this place, but he's stubborn now. He climbs, higher and higher until there's just another door and just another room.

_Fucking typical._

He stops. He tries to get his bearings, but there's nothing to guide him. The party is a distant hum beneath his feet, and this room is like all the others. Almost. There's a dim glow off to the side. Curtained glass doors leading to some kind of balcony.

He jerks at the knob, but they're locked from the outside. A slide bolt at the top, probably to prevent drunken idiots from stumbling out and over a fifth floor railing. But he's furious. Desperate for air he can breathe and not at all sure that drunken idiots might not have the right idea.

His elbow connects with the glass once. Twice. Sharp pain and a splintering sound that's more satisfying than it ought to be. He catches the side of his hand on a shard. A scratch with blood beading along it as he reaches through, but then he's out.

He plants his palms on the wide stone ledge and drags in air. The view isn't exactly inspiring. An alley far below and the worn brick facade of the building across the way. The rusted out fire escape looks close enough to touch and he wonders if he can go that way. Over and down. If he can disappear into the city.

He wonders how far he'd have to go to feel like himself again, but a hand lands next to his and he knows the answer. He studies it. Details flooding him like he's outside his body. An observer taking in the neat, unpolished nails and the brilliant flash of a ring he'd never have pictured on her.

"You're bleeding."

Her fingers dance over his skin like she's going to do something about it. Like it's literal and nothing more.

He turns toward her and steps back in the same motion, but somehow she's already tearing her mouth away from his, leaving him with nothing but a sharp taste on his tongue.

_Champagne_, he thinks. Champagne again, and it calls up all the confusion of the first time she followed him like this.

_I am _not _having sex with you_.

The memory pushes blood hard to the surface of his skin. Their eyes meet and he knows she remembers, too.

She freezes, and it's there for an instant. Sadness and loss and _wondering_. She's not herself, and he wonders who he is. Who he'll ever be again.

"Beckett, what are you _doing?" _

It pours out of him. Frustration and loss. His voice sounds like a stranger's. Like it belongs to the missing person she's made of him.

He expects her to be angry. It's an accusation, and he _wants _her to be angry. Some part of him wants that, anyway, but she takes a slow, deliberate step toward him.

"Enjoying the party."

He thinks of all the ways she might have meant it to sound. Sultry or sarcastic. Angry or matter of fact. Sincere, if they were back in the perfect moment between them. He thinks of all the adjectives he might attach to the simple phrase if he were writing it. If he were writing her. The woman on the page.

But it's a question of her own. As near as she is with a smear of his blood skipping across the backs of her fingers, because they're not quite holding hands. It's a question when she kisses him this time. When her mouth hovers a whisper away from his. When she gives in and closes the distance, because he doesn't. Because he's absolutely still.

There's only one way to answer, though. His hands at her hips and her palms sliding up his chest. She shivers. Cold and something long lost between them. She shivers and he pulls her closer. He almost tells her how much he's missed her. How much he misses her right this second.

"Inside?" he murmurs against her neck. Rising inflection and a shiver of his own to keep her company, but she shakes her head.

"Here," she says as her teeth find every spot she remembers. As her hands peel his shirt away from his skin and find new places.

She steps back from him. She tugs him by the belt into better light that glints off her bracelets. Off the chain that loops twice around the column of her neck and tumbles down her skin.

"You look amazing."

He doesn't mean to say it. It's one of a hundred things he knows not to say, and he's not even surprised when her hands still.

She turns her face to the shadows and she's pulling away. She's head down and leaving now, her shoes crunching on glass. He catches her, though. Just inside the balcony doors he reaches for her and when skin meets skin there's no real choice for either of them.

He presses her into the wall and drags his hands down her sides.

He kisses her again and again, too frantic to give her time to think. His fingers find the hem of her dress. They linger and tease along the boundary, sliding upward by inches.

It's an agonizing counterpoint to the rhythm of her hips against him and the sharp tug of her fingers in his hair.

"_Castle!__"_

It's perfect in her mouth. Breath and grit. Defiance and want. The name he chose, and it's like she's the only one who really knows it. The only one who's ever said it right.

It's brilliant. Painful. It burns his patience like a short fuse. He fixes her in place with a wide palm at her hips.

"Enough."

It's harsh. A command, and her eyes fly open. It's too late, though. The fingers of his free hand drag up the inside of her thigh and curl beneath whatever it is she can wear under a dress that fits her like this. Not much. Not much at all.

Her lips move in the shape of his name again, but there's no sound. Nothing at all as she holds tight to his shoulders and his fingers move unerringly over her. Dragging and circling, pressing and feathering.

It's perfect, too. The moment when she stills against him. When her eyes flutter open and the sadness is gone.

_I know you_.

It's what he wants to say. Like he's standing beside himself. Beside a body that still wants her badly. A version of him that settles for this as if it's all of her he'll ever touch.

_I know you. _

The words don't make it into the air. They never do. Her eyes close and open. He can hardly see anything in the dim light, but she's gone again. He's gone. The person he's supposed to be, and they're falling together into one more dark corner.

The drag of something startles him. Metal on wood and she's pushing him back into a chair. She's sliding into his lap and his fingers are tangled in the cool silver of her necklace. His lips glide down her skin. The rough of his cheek catches the swell of her breast and makes her gasp.

He flattens one palm high against the bare expanse of her back. He's careful of her. His free hand dips to smooth along her thigh and rises to sweep the hair back from her face. His mouth tips up to drop delicate kisses at the corner of hers.

They're at odds. She's hungrier. Fiercer, but somehow they settle into a silent rhythm. It tugs at him, body and soul, like always, but there's something mournful in it. The way they're wordless and the city is loud through the broken glass. The thump of music far below.

She finds his mouth with hers. She drags him higher and it's something about the splay of her fingers over his cheek and the urgency in the kiss that drives his hips up from the chair. It startles him, how close to the edge she has him suddenly. His hands fly away from her body like he's afraid to touch her, but she's wound tight around him and there's nothing for it but surrender. His fingers slide low to the outside of her thighs. Under her dress entirely. They flare out over bare skin and he feels her cry out with his lips against her throat.

She's slipping away long before he's ready. It's more than literal, even though he's moving. Even though he's making the best of the buttons she's left him and a jacket that's nowhere near presentable.

She doesn't say anything as she smoothes her dress down and tucks the combs back in her hair. Or maybe she does. It's strange. Like he's not here at all. Like he hasn't been since that single moment wound around them, a hundred years and a million miles away.

"You're leaving." He sounds surprised. He supposes that's what he sounds like.

She's surprised, too. She turns back from the open door. Not the one he came through. Another he didn't know about with a well-lit hallway beyond.

"Leaving." She repeats it like she knows the word and he doesn't. "Yeah. I'm leaving. Aren't you?"


End file.
